[PRL] Programming language for anonymity network

[Dave Choffnes]

(Re-posting because it bounced from PRL last time. Sorry for the duplicate
messages!)


On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:22 AM, Dave Choffnes <choffnes at ccs.neu.edu>wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> My collaborators at MPI-SWS and I are working on the design and
> implementation of a
> traffic-analysis resistant anonymity network and we would like to
> request your opinion regarding the choice of a programming language /
> environment. Here are the criteria:
>
> 1) Familiarity: The language should be familiar or easy to learn for
>  most potential contributors, as we hope to build a diverse community
> that builds on and contributes to the code.
>
> 2) Maturity: The language implementation, tool chain and libraries
>  should be mature enough to support a production system.
>
> 3) Language security: The language should minimize the risk of
> security-relevant bugs like buffer overflows.
>
>  4) Security of runtime / tool chain: It should be hard to inconspicuously
> backdoor the
> tool chain and, if applicable, runtime environments.
>
> To give two concrete examples:
>
> Using the C language + deterministic builds is an attractive option with
> respect to 1), 2) and 4), but doesn’t provide much regarding 3).
>
> Java does better with respect to 3), however, it trades some of 3) and
> 4) as compared to C. Specifically, we are concerned that large runtimes
> may be difficult to audit. A similar argument may apply to other
> interpreted languages.
>
> Given these criteria, what language would you choose and for what
> reasons? We would also appreciate feedback regarding our criteria.
>
> Thanks!
> David, Nick, Peter, Stevens, and William
>
> PS: Apologies to those on the sysnetsec at ccs and MPI-SWS mailing list who
> are seeing this for the second (or third) time.
>
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